ANSELM REYLE
MYSTIC SILVER

Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen are presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition entitled »Mystic Silver« on Anselm Reyle, the Berlin-based artist who teaches at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts. The show will run from November 9, 2012 to January 27, 2013 and is curated by Dirk Luckow and the artist. It features some 80 selected works from the different series created in recent years as well as new pieces devised specially for the show.

Reyle meets this challenge by separating the 3.200 qm large North Hall into two different sized areas: Like a curtain, a wall made of silver foil separates a room illuminated with natural light from a dark room. He shows a typical selection of his paintings, which are based on each other in their conceptual development, such as stripe paintings, gestural works, various foil paintings to recent works following the »paint-by-numbers« principle. From his sculptural oeuvre, along with the so-called »African« sculptures made from colored mirrored bronze, including »Eternity«, are some earlier sculptural objects such as his neon yellow hay wagon, a delicate neon light installation, the current conception of his sculpture „Philosophy“ based on architectural elements and a wall relief lit by LEDs.

In spite of the wide spectrum of material and form, these haptic-visual works oscillating between architecture and sculpture are combined coherently. Reyle's exhibits in the main room are subject here to a double reflection: They are not only mirrored distortedly in the foil walls, but also against each other in the repeated use of a specific formal language and an artistic material repertoire using found objects from the urban field and trash from »low culture«. He confronts this with art-historical adaptations of the »high art« of the 20th Century, such as Pop Art, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, Hard Edge painting and presents them equally as divergent motif-historical sources.

Old ideas are absorbed, translated into current, generally accessible formulations and intensified in the context of an enterable installation. Anselm Reyle has been involved in several collaborative projects in recent years, such as with the traditional porcelain manufacturer Meissen or with the Austrian artist Franz West, whose artistic results of these collaborations will also be exhibited in Hamburg.